A new button in Google Chrome stops websites from tracking your whereabouts. Here's how to turn it on.
One of the biggest updates of the year was recently made to Google Chrome. It may appear easy to understand and seem unimportant, but it is actually very important. It has to do with where you are, how the browser keeps track of it, and how the websites you visit receive this information. To put it briefly, the new button in Chrome is a privacy feature that lets you access location-based features without disclosing too much personal information.
This is probably something you've seen before if you use an Android phone. We're talking about "approximate location," a permission Google added some time ago to let services in the area know you're there, without revealing your precise location. For example, GPS needs to pinpoint your exact location, while a weather app only needs to know which city you're in.
Until now, Google Chrome only offered two options when sharing your location with a website: not sharing it at all or sharing it with maximum accuracy. To take advantage of this feature, users had to disclose their exact home or work location to a website that likely only needed to know their area.
But Google Chrome for Android has changed this with a new button that you may already be familiar with.
From now on, when a website asks you to specify your location, you will have three options: not to share it, approximate location, or precise location. The second option is new and allows your device to tell Google Chrome where you are without revealing your exact location.
We don't know why Google Chrome didn't add this feature to its Android app earlier, but it's available now. It's useful in most cases where a website needs your location to perform a scan or display relevant search results.
Weather websites, web pages that need to know your location to calculate shipping costs, restaurant search engines by area, and many others. In all these cases, it's best to share your approximate location, which allows the website to determine your area without revealing your precise location.
In fact, there are only a few instances where the site is required to pinpoint your exact location, and using GPS is one of them. From now on, choose the "Approximate Location" option whenever possible.